


red in tooth and claw

by zlot



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, F/F, Misses Clause Challenge, Murder Wives, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 03:19:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5481413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zlot/pseuds/zlot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucille is familiar enough with other women’s bodies—intimate, even.</p>
            </blockquote>





	red in tooth and claw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosedamask](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosedamask/gifts).



> Happy yuletide, damask_and_dark! I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Content warnings: references to incest and underage sex in canon; reference (non-explicit) to past sexual abuse.

Before Thomas had become all she had—before her world had shrunk to the size of one beautiful boy—she had Theresa, his nurse. She watched over Lucille, too, but she was retained by Mother for the milk in her breasts. One of Lucille’s calmest early memories is of sitting in the nursery with Theresa as she gave her brother suck from her smooth, pale bosom. It was not really proper for Lucille to watch, but Theresa knew that Lucille hated to be left alone, even for the space of half an hour.

It was fascinating to see one person live on the body of another. Years later, in the confusion of her adolescence, she would try to feed Thomas that way again. When it did not work, when she remained stubbornly dry, she thought to herself that perhaps she was a withered shoot.

Theresa was long gone, by then. Mother had dismissed her when she discovered that Lucille had been sleeping in the servants’ quarters every night, wrapped around Theresa like a creeping strand of ivy. After that, there was only Thomas.

In the beginning, in the early days just after their relationship first changed, Lucille was fascinated by the differences between her body and his, and how those differences could so easily be leveraged into pleasure—here a void, and here a presence to fill it. Here, a swelling fullness; here, lean sinew. It was as if they had been born to complement each other, to slot together like the machine pieces in Thomas’s workshop.

She especially thought this after the first time she was forced in the asylum. How unnatural it had all felt, as if the doctor were of some other kind entirely than her and Thomas. She was glad, even then, that Thomas would not ever have to feel the wrongness of some other girl's body. It was another way she could suffer for both.

She is familiar enough with other women’s bodies—intimate, even. She had attended Mother, of course, and rubbed liniment into her scars. She had helped Pamela in and out of bed, helped her change her gowns and petticoats. She had cut off a bit of hair from all of them, and a finger too—but only after they were dead. She did not really like to hear them scream, though she had a silent, icy place inside her where she could go if she needed it. If the noises were too loud, if they reminded her too much of the institution.

No woman’s body had quite prepared her for Edith’s delicate beauty, milk-white in the dark hollows of a ballroom, with her sharp collarbones offset by loose dresses and enormous, soft sleeves.

The first moment of disgust she ever felt for Thomas came when he fixed his attentions on Edith. She felt the heat of his aggressive, _male_ desire for her in all its lack of subtlety. She did not feel threatened, not quite—it was a trick of his body, an evolutionary impulse, not love—but she did feel irritated. He couldn’t begin to understand a girl like that. It did not surprise her that he had first become interested in her as she sat at a typewriter, just like any office-girl who shares a flat and fancies herself a New Woman because of it. Edith was more rare and strange than he supposed.

It was a shame to bring such a young, bright spark home for their tawdry purposes, when there were so many unhandsome, ordinary women to choose from in every city, town, and hamlet—women who would never be missed, who would never write a novel or have so frank a gaze.

A small part of her did not mind the thought of having Edith in their home for a few weeks, which was perhaps as irrational as anything Thomas felt. But there it was: even the withered bloom might try to grow toward the ripe, healthy fruit, to imbibe its richness, or perhaps to crowd it out of its soil.

 

\--

 

When Alan told Edith to be careful of her fascination with the Sharpes, of course she blushed; she could never help doing that. But she wondered how he had been astute enough to say “the Sharpes,” not just “Sir Thomas.”

She does not feel she quite grasps what drives Lady Lucille, or what makes her so singular compared to anyone Edith has ever met. She is in many ways a perfect lady, so accomplished and dignified, and yet unaffectedly charming. But there is something beneath it. Alan mentioned to her that Eunice calls Lucille a bluestocking, has mocked her for collecting butterflies and studying them. Undoubtedly Eunice is still feeling snubbed by the Sharpes, and Edith would never gloat over that, just smile a little into the mirror.

It’s more than being clever, of course, or learned. There is something feral in Lucille’s smile, in her protective, anxious gazes at her brother. Edith pictures her as a she-wolf, growling from the mouth of a cave at any who might threaten her favorite cub. And yet, for Edith, she has only smiles.

Edith rather thinks she would like to be inside that cave. She would like to be considered one of Lucille’s own, watched over by her eyes that miss nothing.

 

\--

 

Thomas stays away from his bride’s bed to placate her, and she knows it, but Lucille still thinks he is foolish to leave her alone so much, to let her wander about. Edith cries out in the night, and if Thomas is already asleep in the attic, Lucille will go downstairs, wrapped in one of his overcoats, and see if a presence in the room will quiet her. It generally does.

Once Lucille found herself on the brink of singing to the girl, but she forced the lullaby back between her teeth, and thought of Theresa, and the day she left Allerdale, and the tears Lucille had shed, realizing that people could leave and never come back. There is no question about whether Edith will leave, for Lucille will usher her out herself.

Edith shifts in her bed, in her diaphanous night-dress that makes her look even younger than she is, and Lucille moves the candle in her hand to shed more of its glow on her face, grown peaceful now, even here in the killing-jar.

Lucille has no stomach for this task and hopes that it will all be over quickly. She does not want to stretch out the suffering. She does not want Edith to fall more and more deeply in love with Thomas, only to realize at the end, as all the others had, that he was only pretending. In that moment she feels it would be more merciful to kill Edith now, in her sleep. She could crush her, butterfly-fragile, and then it would be done, and Edith could be free and well again, rid of this miserable world of fakery and dust for good and all.

A silly, profitless idea. But Lucille has always been a romantic.

Edith’s face twists in her sleep, and she grasps out toward the light, toward Lucille, and her fingers brush Thomas’s coat. She seems almost to smile, then, so Lucille holds Edith’s wrist, just for a moment or two, and imagines what it would be like to be so trusting, to have a skin free of scars.

 

\--

 

Lucille had told Edith in the snow that she would not stop, would never stop, until one of them was dead at the hands of the other, and Edith had believed it, as anyone would have who had seen her face, pale with fury, as she said it.

But she had swung the shovel, and Lucille had fallen, but had not died. By the time Edith realized this, the rage had left her, and her enemy had looked so vulnerable, bloody and half-frozen in the ruddy snow.

So Edith pulled her inside with aching arms and chained her to her bed, and began to nurse Alan and Lucille both in a state of numb shock. If asked, she would say that she was waiting for the thaw, for help to come from the depot. But no one asked. Alan’s wounds had become infected and he grew delirious in his fever. He knew Edith, but not where he was or what had happened. Edith knew he would worsen before he would improve. Lucille was unconscious still, but her wounds were carefully bound.

And Thomas was dead. She thought that his being dead helped her to forgive him. She did not know what she would do if he were with her now, explaining and excusing, needing her to _understand_ him, telling her how he had technically never killed anyone with his own hands, how it had hurt him so to lure women in, how wretchedly he had felt for her when he allowed Lucille to murder her father. Forgiveness might run dry under such conditions.

She mechanically brushes Lucille’s hair, for want of other things to do, and considers, for a moment, cutting off a lock and braiding it, to keep as her own trophy should Lucille die. If she did, in fact, kill her.

She is glad Lucille did not make excuses.

 

\--

 

When she awakes, she sees Edith, and does not remember right away, and only wonders why it is she who is in the bed being cared for, this time. That has not happened since the asylum.

When she remembers, she rasps, “You’re a fool.” Her wrists and legs are restrained, of course, so Edith is not as much a fool as anticipated. But it is still true.

Edith blinks at her and says nothing for a while. Then she asks, “Would you like a cup of tea?”

Lucille is too tired to feel angry. She is so tired she might as well be dead. Thomas is dead, so her life is over too—one follows from the other, axiomatic and inevitable. So all she says is, “I suppose I deserve it.”

Edith has left Mother’s ring on her finger, which should be a relief, but it feels heavy. She sees that Edith’s pretty hand has been bandaged clumsily where Lucille sliced at it. Neither is unscathed, at least.

 

\--

 

Alan is improving and can remember what happened, but she hasn’t told him that Lucille is alive and in the house. She does not want to worry him, and until the snows melt, there’s little enough to do about it, except the thing she has already decided not to do.

Though Lucille goads her to it. “Wouldn’t you rather just finish it?” she asks. “I’m your rival, am I not? No one would know. You’ve already made a start.” With the hand Edith lets her have free, she touches the place where Edith took her pen and stabbed her.

Edith doesn’t say much in reply. Today, though, she asked about Lucille’s father, the man she described once as a brute. “Did you admire your father, Lucille?” she asks.

“I poisoned him.”

“Are those things mutually exclusive?”

Lucille’s mouth twitches at one side, but she says, “If I must be alive, I do not intend to spend my remaining time, before I am hanged, giving you material for your sensational penny-dreadful novel.”

So they do not talk much, at first, though Lucille will occasionally tell stories of her past unprompted, if she thinks they will shock Edith. Once they would have.

 

\--

 

On the day the doctor leaves Allerdale to walk the many miles to town for help, Lucille hears Edith promise to leave their prisoner chained. She hears the front doors close heavily. Then Edith comes upstairs in canary-yellow silk and unchains her.

Lucille’s first impulse is to reach for a weapon—and anything can be a weapon, once wielded—or to lunge at Edith and throttle her. But surprise stills her for the moment, as well as weariness. What for? The killing was for Thomas, and he is gone. She should save her strength in order to do away with herself.

As for Edith, she merely sits on the edge of the bed, quite within reach. She says, very quietly, “Alan will undoubtedly bring men to haul you away. I don’t intend they should find you.”

Lucille says nothing at first, and then: “You will overdo it, this saintly angel-in-the-house performance. Do you think your chains have domesticated me, Edith? Do I seem tamed to you?”

“On the contrary. To me you have never seemed tame.”

Lucille pulls herself to a sitting position and tries to stretch the feeling back into her legs.

“Well?” she says at last, breaking a long silence. “Why is it you have decided I should not face the majesty of the law?”

“You have suffered. You have lost everything. What more can they take? I would rather you keep whatever you have left.”

“There is nothing.”

“Dignity, then. And beauty.”

Lucille smiles bitterly at that. “You are the beauty, my dear. The prize of prizes. You redeemed Thomas from his wicked life. I am only the moth that eats away at the satin of your cheek.”

Edith rests her hand, trembling a bit in fear, against Lucille’s own cheek. Lucille flinches, but Edith does not move away.

“You are more of a bloom than you know,” Edith says. “But you know how I felt about you, how fascinated I was by you. I have been hurt by it, certainly. It does not follow that you must die, and I don't fancy becoming an executioner. So I want you to run.”

Lucille leans into Edith’s hand then, and closes her eyes. “I am not strong enough. And I cannot be alone.”

“You will not be alone, if you take me with you.”

Lucille’s eyes flicker open then, insect-quick.

“You have been twisted by this place, Lucille,” Edith says, looking down, away from her face. “You are blighted by it and must leave. I can help you to do it. I have already left everything I was behind. I can do it again, and lend you strength.”

“Don’t talk _nonsense_ ,” Lucille hisses, then. “I am a monster. You said so yourself.”

“You were not born a monster. Perhaps you will not die one.”

 

\--

 

They make their way off in the opposite direction before Alan and the constabulary arrive, heavily cloaked and veiled against casual gazes. Edith feels a twinge of regret for Alan, but the step she is taking feels less dangerous than staying and waiting for him. Even if he does not expect her to discharge her debt to him in the conventional, novelistic way, she is not sure she could have the energy to stand against his everlasting, puppylike devotion.

Or as Lucille put it, dryly, “You’re determined to die a widow, I see.”

The light hurts Lucille’s eyes since her injury, and they keep the shades of the train compartment drawn low. Edith bathes her forehead every so often, without being asked, and Lucille lets her, and acts as if she is doing Edith a favor.

They are going to withdraw some of Edith’s funds in London, and then they are going to the Continent. Neither has suggested a destination there. For now, they only wish to disappear.

She notices that Lucille has removed the ring.

 

\--

 

There is a train, and a boat, and another train, and another, and then a pensione in the north of Italy. They do not talk much, but help each other to dress, brush each other’s hair out at night. Lucille deigns to speak Italian on their behalf when it is called for. She says they are two lady entomologists looking for Italian specimens, and Edith looks at her askance and says nothing. But they must appear strange enough for this explanation to pass.

Every day Lucille repeats the words in her brain: _I have left Allerdale Hall for good. I am on my own in the world. I will have another kind of life. I will step into the sun. I will be free, and I will only kill those who deserve it._

She makes little progress in believing it, with so little to interest her except her own grief—and, of course, the oddity of Edith, the pure unreality of Edith’s being here with her, sleeping in the same set of rooms with no apparent fear of being consumed.

Lucille does not sleep so well. She thought this had passed unnoticed, until one night, when Edith was unlacing Lucille’s corset, as had become customary. On this night, however, Edith’s hand lingered on Lucille’s bare shoulder, a finger against the lace of her chemise.

“Would you sleep better if you were not alone?” she asked.

And though Lucille hated herself for it, a thrum of something like pleasure ran over the skin of her arms, and when she knew her voice would be steady, she answered, “Perhaps.”

And from that night they sleep together, and Lucille finds her mind grows quieter as she ceases to think about anything but the sleeves of Edith’s new night-dress, still unmarred by any bloodstains, translucent and delicate and yet somehow never crushed.

 

\--

 

One night, it happens quite naturally: Lucille pulls Edith’s body heavily against her own, and murmurs her song, the one that drew her downstairs that morning in Allerdale, the one that drew her upstairs to find Lucille and Thomas together, as if magnetized by the sweet voice and the moonlight that had spilled on Lucille’s rounded shoulders.

And Edith cries. Through her grief, the song reaches her and touches her to the quick. She knows then how much she has lost, knows it sharp and full. She is all alone in the world, except for the woman who would have killed her without scruple.

And when the song is through, Lucille places one bone-thin finger against Edith’s chin and turns her face, to kiss her. Her lips are dry, so dry they grasp and pull at hers demandingly, as Thomas’s never had. It feels more like an experiment than a perversion—at least until Lucille’s tongue nudges and presses into her mouth, and she feels a spike of desire low in the belly, almost like fear and quite as overpowering.

Lucille draws in her breath raggedly when Edith begins to stroke her, tentatively, through her night-dress, all by instinct, by memories of her one night of marital passion, and the dreams she has had of women without faces, and the ways she has touched herself at night in her bedroom in Buffalo. She runs her fingernails, gently, down Lucille’s arms. She presses her nose, cold from their frigid room, against the length of Lucille’s white neck, against the scar on her face. She brushes her fingers against Lucille’s bosom and feels the nipple, hard, through the cloth—and then does it again, just to hear the hiss escape through Lucille’s teeth.

And then those teeth are against her thigh as she moves down and pushes up Edith’s night-dress, which has already treacherously ridden up to help Lucille gain access to that dark center of her body. She crooks her fingers against Edith in the most insinuating manner, so that Edith rocks against her, trying only to press closer to Lucille’s cool, composed touch. Edith is less composed; she moans, low and quiet, and tangles her hands in Lucille’s black, waving hair.

Lucille responds to Edith’s unformulated wish and lets her face be pulled between Edith’s legs. There, for the first time in weeks, her tongue is loosened, is eloquent. It draws heat and shivers from Edith, draws half-completed syllables and gasps, draws a release so powerful it leaves Edith almost sobbing into the pillows heaped around her.

Lucille comes back up for air then, and moves her face level with Edith’s. She buries her face in Edith’s masses of blonde hair and is silent a while.

 

\--

 

It is surprising for Lucille to realize that after one has lost everything, there can be new things to be found. But she is not surprised that it is Edith. Edith has always been new, and strange, and brave past explanation.

Here, without a house or any fixed address, without family, without names or histories, without plans, there is still something. She does not name it, and nor does Edith. But it is life, of a kind, and she feels alive in it.


End file.
